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Even before his death, author and painter Jacob Cremer (1827-1880) expressed his wish to be honoured with a bench in green. And so it happened. One year after his death, the Cremer bench was unveiled on 23 December 1881 near the water feature in the Scheveningen Woods on Duinweg.

Cremer was a celebrated writer. He was especially successful with a new literary genre, which, following other European authors, he introduced to the Netherlands in 1853: the village tale, partly written in dialect. He wrote numerous of these idyllic, often moralistic novellas. Most were situated in the Betuwe, later - in 1857 he moved to The Hague - also in Scheveningen.

Cremer is considered the first Dutch author who could make a living out of his trade. He made favourable deals with publishers and his readings were lucrative. But Cremer was also a socially engaged man. He often donated the proceeds of his lectures to good causes. Moreover, from 1863 onwards, he advocated the abolition of child labour. It would not be until 1874 that the 'Van Houten Children's Act' prohibited work by children under twelve. Cremer continued to draw and paint throughout his life. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Dutch Literary Museum in The Hague, for instance, both have paintings by him.

His monument of brick and stone was designed by H.P. Vogel. The monument Saxe-Weimar is also by this architect. Vogel taught architecture at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague for many years. He worked in a neoclassical style, inspired by the art and architecture of the Greeks and Romans. Although the pillars of the Cremer bench are square rather than round, they are reminiscent of those of ancient temples. And the semicircular arch, the basic shape of the bench, refers to the amphitheatres of antiquity.